Free Voyagers III - Star Brothers by Ben Bova Page B

missing: Kirill Markov. He hasn’t been in good health, Stoner knew, but Kir would have come no matter what. Unless something really has hit him. Better ask Jo about him.
    He went through the motions of the party, and soon found that he was actually enjoying himself. There were tensions, of course, especially with Doug and Elly’s daughter Susan. But it was good to see his two families in the same place, good to see an old and dear friend like Claude, even if Nicole had died. Life goes on, he told his star brother. Life belongs to the living, his star brother replied.
    The presence in his mind seemed to enjoy the party, as well. The rituals of the birthday cake were especially fascinating. As he bent to blow out the candles, for a flash of an instant Stoner’s inner vision saw a parallel ritual on the world of his star brother’s birth, where all fifty members of his creche celebrated the day of their awakening every ten years, coming together to unite physically no matter where their individual lives had taken them.
    But the vision passed in the flicker of an eye and he was back on the patio by the swimming pool, beneath gently swaying palm trees under a blue Hawaiian sky, surrounded by friends and colleagues and—Stoner looked up sharply from the smoke of the blown-out candles. There was an enemy here. A traitor. A spy.
    All his senses tingled with alarm.
    Certainly not Doug, no matter how deeply his bitterness ran. No one in the family. Elly’s new husband? Stoner looked at the man with fresh interest, but he turned away immediately to speak to one of the other guests.
    One of Jo’s people? That would be more logical. And much more dangerous. Perhaps it was corporate secrets he was after. It was definitely a man, that much Stoner sensed. But which man?
    The sense of danger slowly faded. Although Stoner stayed taut-nerved and wary for the rest of the party, he could learn no more. Maybe I’m getting paranoid in my old age, he thought. How much could a corporate spy find out at a birthday party? But that’s not the real problem, he knew. There’s a spy in Jo’s inner staff. I’ll have to warn her about it.
    He pulled his granddaughter Susan to one corner of the patio and, still keeping an eye on the crowd of guests eating birthday cake and drinking champagne, he let her tell him about her boyfriend and how much in love they were and how afraid she was to tell her mother.
    “He’s Japanese,” Susan confessed, struggling to hold back tears. “He wants to marry me and take me to Osaka, where he lives.” Susan looked very much like her mother: chestnut hair, round face so young, so vulnerable. With a pang, Stoner recalled that he had never spent a day with his own daughter when she had been a troubled teenager.
    “How did you meet him?” Stoner asked.
    “At the university in Sydney.”
    “He’s a freshman too?”
    “Yes.”
    “And do you expect your parents to keep on supporting you once you’ve married him?”
    With a shake of her head, “We’ll take turns working. One of us will work for a year while the other goes to classes. It’ll take longer for us to get our degrees that way, but we’ll manage.”
    “And the baby?”
    The tears threatened to overflow. But Susan kept her voice level as she answered, “We’ve talked about it and we’ve decided to abort it. Neither one of us is ready for parenthood yet.”
    Stoner felt a sigh go through him. Deep inside his mind the alien presence there felt an immeasurable sadness at the thought of deliberately ending a life. Life is so rare, so precious! But Stoner replied silently, Not on this planet. Despite our best teachings, human life is still held cheap. Jo was right: it’s the most abundant thing we have.
    Yet all he said to his granddaughter was, “Why did you allow yourself to get pregnant, in the first place?”
    “We didn’t plan to! It just happened. You were young once, weren’t you?”
    Despite himself, he laughed. “A thousand years